Show People

Behind the Scenes With the Drama Queens

One-hour call backstage at the Westbeth Theater. Eight actors from the Tweed

Fractured Classicks Series sit at mirrors in their communal dressing room making up for tonight's performance of 'Imitation of Imitation of Life,' director Kevin Malony's shrewd, arch, sidesplitting burlesque of a classic Lana Turner B-movie weepie about ruthless ambition, demented mother love, and the anguish of racial 'passing.' Cast:

photo: Sylvia Plachy

Jodi Lennon (left) and Jackie Hoffman: "The real challenge is winning the audience over to a biological girl."

JACKIE HOFFMAN (rubber-faced, rubber-voiced actor-comedian, ex-Second City; ex-cabaret; ex-one-woman shows during 15-year-career Off-Off), applying Tan Number 2 makeup for her role as Flotilla DeBarge's "colored" daughter: "I'm a Queens girl originallyBayside, yeshivas, but you could never tell. I went to Tisch School of the Arts, then I worked at Second City in Chicago for eight yearswe wrote all our own material in that jointand I've worked with Amy and David Sedaris, won best actress in a revue, closed the last weekend at Eighty-Eight's, did Tweed's Bad Seedling and The Children's Hour with Lypsinka and Charles Busch, so you can see I've worked with drag queens and the odd diva before. Not that it's a problem. I can handle it. I can be as big a bitch as anyone."

LYPSINKA (legendary drag performance artist)wigless, wearing kimono and down booties: "How many hours of my life have I spent getting in and out of makeup? I don't even want to think about it. It's too depressing."

JACKIE HOFFMAN: "Totally natural, honey. It's Cover Girl for day. The thing about Lypsinka getting into makeup is, it's not like if you blink you miss it. If you took a three-hour nap maybe you might miss it."

LYPSINKA: "I'm trying to become an alluring creature, darling. Did you ever see the Howard Stern where they put a hidden camera behind the makeup mirror when Zsa Zsa Gabor was on? They sent in the guy who stutters and he said, 'M-m-m-miss G-g-g-gabor, I j-j-j-ust want to know what you need.' She said, 'I vant to be lit and I vant to be lit vell!' Then they sent in someone else who asked the same question and she said, 'I vant to be lit and I vant to be lit vell!' Finally they sent in the wardrobe assistant, who was dragging the dress on the floor, and Zsa Zsa lost it. They got the whole thing on camera. But there was nothing she could do. She'd signed a release."

JACKIE HOFFMAN: "Louis is John's personal makeup artist. But he takes pity on the rest of us."

LOUIS BRAUN: "For Jackie, I use a tan foundation to get that light ethnic thing happening."

JACKIE HOFFMAN, stage whispering to visitor: "Just put down that the black family didn't get any flowers."

LYPSINKA: "Hon, just enjoy the flow and don't be so bitter."

SCENE 3

Fifteen-minute call.

LYPSINKA: ''When I started out back in the East Village, at the Pyramid, I didn't know exactly what it was that I was doing. The whole lip-synching thing was postmodern, but I didn't know what that meant. I was doing it to be what I thought was glamorous. Eventually, when my own psychotherapy kicked in, the Lypsinka character got more theatrically evolved. You know, drag is a trap and lip-synching is a trap within a trap. I used to go to parties and people would not think I could say anything. They thought I couldn't talk without a tape. So I've changed. I figured I had to start talking. I also learned what postmodern meant."

JACKIE HOFFMAN: "The real challenge here is being as broad as I am comedically and keeping the moment real. That and winning the audience over to a biological girl."